Posts Tagged ‘Challenges’

The wonders of the Internet and social media seem to have radically changed the nature of relationships. This is perhaps most apparent in personal relationships where email, texting, Facebook, Twitter, and other offerings provide constant updates on what a vast network of family and friends are doing and thinking at the moment. Many people spend […]

The October issue of Consumer Reports outlines “Secrets to Stress-Free Flying.” This 14-page article provides an interesting history of the airline industry, including the forces that drove your once loved airline to become an object of intense scorn and hatred for most passengers. Over recent years, the airlines have refined their strategy for making record […]

An industry executive that chaired an advisory board at a major research university once commented to me that academia’s unit of time is the semester. “When a faculty member says he will get back to me right away, he means by the end of the semester.” We measure performance of computers in cycles per second, […]

The August 2016 issue of Consumer Reports summarizes a much longer report from revealnews.org on student debt. Their headline is 42 million people owe $1.3 trillion. Their survey found that “45% of the people with student loan debt said that college was not worth the cost. Of those who said college wasn’t worth the money, […]

The purpose of teaching is to enable learning and, over time, mastery. Classrooms and computers – smart boards, workstations, laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc. – are enablers of learning. The most important enabler is student engagement. This can be a challenge as ubiquitous digital devices often lead to significant student multi-tasking, much of it irrelevant […]

Various pundits are projecting that by 2020 – just four years – the driving of cars and trucks will be completely automated. Vehicle services, whether for consumers or businesses, will be readily available for very reasonable prices. I will not need to own a personal vehicle and my business can dispense with its fleet of […]

In “The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789,” Joseph J. Ellis chronicles the planning, drafting, and ratification of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in 1789. The title refers to George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. These four men, with support from Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson, led […]

Just watched this movie this week, after having read many of the books published on the Great Recession, as well as having served on a National Academy study committee of what happened. During this study, I had a chance to chat with the second most senior executive at one of the major banks involved, one […]

Posted on December 10, 2015, 2:10 pm, by Bill Rouse, under Challenges.

There is growing evidence that NFL referees have been instructed to make calls – particularly pass interference calls and false start calls – to control the outcomes of NFL games. The NFL vehemently denies these accusations, but the data are very clear. The NFL knows the outcomes that will maximize television revenues as well as […]

Posted on November 9, 2015, 10:42 am, by Bill Rouse, under Challenges.

Our operatives have uncovered the motivation and reasoning behind various presidential candidates now emphasizing what many of them are calling the “new realty.” This reality relates to their personal histories, climate change, economic prospects, and so on. All of the candidates have “repositioned” their personal stories to gain voter support. One candidate, born to immense […]

Stories of Change

My focus in this blog is fundamental change. In particular, I will write about fundamental change of complex organizational systems. The series of entries will report on a 20-year journey working globally with well over one hundred enterprises and several thousand executives and senior managers. I will also provide observations and comments on contemporary news and events.